Infamous 2: You Create Missions, You Become Famous

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User-generated content is key to keeping Cole busy in this sequel.

By Anthony Gallegos

Cole's best friend and Infamous 2 fan-favorite character Zeke is recounting tales of his heroism to a couple of hot chicks. After a bit of cajoling, Cole finally gets the hint that Zeke's blowing things out of proportion to impress the ladies, and before I know it, I'm getting to play through a "recounting" of the events. Enemies rush me, explosions are blowing apart pieces of the environment, and Cole is kicking the crap out of things.

The coolest part? The mission I described above isn't part of the campaign.

This mission -- involving important characters and packing development for them -- was made by a Sucker Punch staff member in the user-generated content creator. It's an elaborate creation that showcases the potential of the content creation tools we're all going to get when Infamous 2 ships this June. Players can drop in objects, and use deceptively simple looking tools to create deep quests that players can play, rate and even alter into their own remix.

Of course dropping objects and enemies into the environment doesn't make a quest, so players have to create logic chains. Logic chains are a series of nodes, represented as little circles with editable settings that are only visible during the creation part of Infamous 2. This enables creators to make it so crossing certain boundaries makes new enemies appear, creates collectibles for players to chase down, and even triggers elaborate sets of behavior for AI allies and enemies. Levels can be as simple as walking into an environment and killing everyone or as complex as a multi-staged event where players have to complete several objectives. And it's not for nothing, either, as you get experience from user-created levels.

Dropping nodes into the environment won't just make a level come to life, though, and it's going to take some patience to make a level of any complexity. First you drop in a level start, then you drop in a series of triggers that tells the player what to do, decides whether or not to take control away from the player so that he or she pays attention, and creates the condition for victory. To make these things happen and work with one another, you have to chain together the nodes -- literally. Nodes can work on their own, but to create elaborate scenarios and AI behaviors you have to chain together various nodes with power chords. The sequence they're chained in also matters, as certain nodes can cancel out the effects of the previous ones if you're not careful.

Creating levels is not as simple and fun as blasting apart the world and questing with Cole, but it's very rewarding. Play testing a simple level where I managed to successfully limit Cole's abilities made me kind of proud, so I can't wait to get a chance to write out a quest that's actually... well... a quest. And hell, if I get frustrated with it, I can always play other people's creations and rate them so folks can find out about their awesome work.

Bad Cole uses fire. Burn the user levels, Cole!

The team at Sucker Punch wants user-generated content to be rewarding for all kinds of players, from designers to the people who just want to create pretty environments. If you suck at doing the elaborate chains of AI and what not but are awesome at creating beautiful cool set pieces, you can upload your creation and let someone else remix it into a real quest. And don't worry, you'll still get credit for being the originator even if someone else gets famous off of your foundation.

So much of what players complain about online is the lack of content for a game like Infamous 2. Not because the campaign is short, but because they always want more. Well, if the user-creation tools catch on, you'll hopefully never have much cause to complain or lament. You can test out your inner game designer when the beta starts later this week.